My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling selected from a group of seedlings at Gresham, Oreg. The seedlings were planted as a result of breeding efforts carried on by me since the year 1968. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of upright flowering Asiatic lilies with miniature bushy plants suitable without chemical dwarfingfor pot culture, mass planting, and landscape work.
I achieved the desired objective by using as a seed parent Lilium `Cinnabar` and as the pollen parent Lilium `Red Carpet`.
My new lily plant is characterized by a miniature bushy plant habit well suited for pot culture, mass planting, and landscape work. The leaves are exceptionally long for any lily.
The flower color is exceptional; the tepals have golden-orange midribs shading into brilliant orange along the tepal margins.This grading of color is produced within all tissues of the tepal and represents a new color pattern; in other lilies with deeper colored margins, the deeper pigment is carried only in the epidermis of the tepals. This flower color, in an unspotted flower, is a totally new combination in Asiatic hybrid lilies. The unusally dark pollen emphasizes the color of the flower.
The plant is an exceptional grower and is highly tolerant to virus and resistant to the diseases that usually plague lilies and impair their forcing performance.
The clone has given excellent performance in forcing trials in which the bulbs are precooled and forced out of season. Its uniformity of forcing is remarkable even for a clone. The plant will flower in from 60 to 65 days, a characteristic of tremendous commercial importance. Several blooms of medium size are produced on a single stalk; the majority of 6 to 7 inch in circumference bulbs will produce plants with two stems, with an average total of 5 to 8 buds.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Gresham, Oreg. Successive generations produced by bulb scale propagation and natural multiplication from bulblets have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety are fixed and hold true from generation to generation.